d, that, utterly worn out with
fatigue and fright and exhausted electricity, she was asleep. She then
got up and wrung out the rain from portions of her own and Miss Emma's
dress, and heaped fresh armfuls of moss upon the sleeper in an original
attempt at the pack; then she proceeded to explore the neighborhood, to
see if there were any exit in other directions from the terrors of the
swamp.

Stars began to struggle through and confuse their rays with the
ravelled edges of the clouds. She groped along from tree to tree,
looking constantly behind her at the clear, light opening of sky beneath
which Miss Emma lay.

Perhaps she had come farther than she knew; for all at once, in the
dread stillness that nothing but the dripping dampness broke, a sound
smote her like a pang. It was an innocent and simple sound enough, a
man's voice, clear and sweet, though measured somewhat, and suppressed
in volume, chanting a slow, sad hymn, that had yet a kind of rejoicing
about it:--

"Oh, no longer bond in Egypt,
No longer bond in Egypt,
No longer bond in Egypt.
The Lord hath set him free!"

It came from a hollow below her. Flor pushed aside the great, glistening
leaves in silence, and looked tremblingly in. There were half-burnt
brands on a broad stone, throwing out an uncertain red glimmer; there
was an awning of plaited reeds reaching from bough to bough; there was
an old man stretched upon the ground, and a stalwart man sitting beside
him and chanting this song, as if it were a burial-service: for the old
man was dead.

Flor began to tremble again, with that instinctive animal antipathy to
death and dissolution. But in an instant a rekindling gleam of the
embers, hardly quenched, shot over the singer's face. In the same
instant Flor shook before the secret she had learned, Sarp was a
runaway, to be sure; and runaways ate little girls, she knew. But Flor,
having lately encouraged incredulity, could hardly find it in her heart
to believe that the fact of having stolen himself could have so utterly
changed the old nature of Sarp, the kind butler, who always had a
pleasant word for her when others had a cuff. Yet should she hail him?
Ah, no, never! But then--Miss Emma! Her young mistress would die of
starvation and the damp.

"Sarp!" whispered Flor, huskily.

The man started and sprang to his feet, alert and ready, waiting for his
unseen enemy,--then half relapsed, thinking it might be nothing but the
twit